


Animals in Cellophane

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2008, Dean:Powers, Gen, SPN Season 3, Sam:Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-21
Updated: 2010-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam always apologizes for who Dean is, but he never does for the man Sam has become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animals in Cellophane

**Author's Note:**

> With much love to: catdancerz for clearing my thoughts where they were a bit murky and for a detailed editing; leighm for making the prose truly American and being generally awesome. Also, thanks to dotfic because she assured me the idea was worth expanding when I first talked about it with her. ♥   
> Mistakes are, as usual, all mine.

**Animals in Cellophane**  
*

Dean's got a long scar on his chest. It starts at the base of his neck, goes straight between his pectorals and curves low toward his heart. It stops, shy of the tattoo, in a pucker of raised skin and jagged edges, laps at it without breaking the black lines. It doesn't matter; another one breaks them, short and wide over the left point of the sigil.

He imagines opening it wide, that big scar that intersects his chest, a window on his lungs and heart, past his ribs.

Dean's sure whatever spilled out and got left behind did it from that scar.

-*-

In Hemingford, Nebraska, Dean sees ghosts everywhere. Dozens of men. Their mouths open in silent screams; they walk beside him, a crowd between him and Sam.

Dean never smells their scent. Never tells Sam he sees them until they start touching him with their clawed hands, drive sharp nails into his flesh and leave trails of blood on his arms that seep into the cloth of his shirt and jacket.

He gets so cold, after. His teeth click painfully until his jaw aches from the effort of keeping his mouth shut. He scratches at the slashes on his arms and his blood's still warm.

The ghosts plaster their faces against the window, beyond the salt on the sill. He watches them as he huddles under the blankets, sees their faces stuck in death's throes, the rictus of their mouths and the empty sockets where the eyes once were.

Dean likes ghosts. They're simple; the questions that need answers are straightforward – violent death, unfinished business. Vengeance. They're easy to deal with: salt and fuel and fire until the bones crackle and burn. When there are only ashes, the ghosts are gone.

They're not demons and Sam can't order them around. They don't puff out in a cloud of dust because Sam told them to.

He averts his gaze. Their room has a white ceiling and yellow walls with concentric circles of black dots. Dean thinks whoever decorated it was going for a retro style. He snorts, laughs. Yes, the decorator succeeded only if the intent was the puke-inducing feel of an acid trip.

It's all about intent, anyway. The intentions were good.

Sam piles more blankets on his shoulders when Dean can't stop shaking. When he runs out of blankets, Sam turns away. He hunches over the coffee table, the laptop glowing, knees raised high on each side of it. Everything looks small beside Sam. Sam – Sam he looks bigger every day.

Dean closes his eyes, drowns in the rhythm of Sam's fingers click-click on the keyboard. Not quite asleep, not quite awake.

Sam's voice brings him back. "I found them," he says. "I found why."

The ghosts cram inside the car when Sam drives to a resort built with the blood of twenty-five Mexican workers.

One of them sits in the front seat, close to Dean, stares at the dark road behind the windshield. The ghost's quiet, like it knows he and Sam are going to put it to rest.

-*-

Three towns later they're still in Nebraska and Dean sips surprisingly good coffee while he sits on the lowest step of the porch outside their motel room. The vista is a nearly empty parking lot of bare asphalt. Two pillars in the middle of it are like totem poles to a faceless god.

Sam joins him so quietly Dean jumps and swears, spills coffee on his hands.

Sam doesn't remark on it, says, "Is the coffee good? Aren't you cold? Do you need your jacket?"

Dean knows all the answers, has them on the tip of his tongue.

Far in the distance, before he can talk, he catches the dissonance in the air, like the shimmering of a distant fire. There's no smoke, only a discoloration in the pale blue of the sky, a purplish-blue bruise. If it weren't so low, Dean could dismiss it as an odd cloud.

In the afternoon, Dean sees a poltergeist's violet color bleeding into the red bricks of a house.

More unsettling is the guilt on the parent's faces who let that kid down, their color murky and viscous like mud. Oh, they don't know Dean can see it. They buy their cover with a gracious and civil smile, let them sit in their lush living room.

Their daughter, the one still alive, offers Dean chocolate chip cookies and crayons to draw with. He makes a stick figure of himself and Sam on a sheet of legal paper, listens while Sam asks useless questions of her parents.

It doesn't matter what they've done, if they've been careless or stupid or selfish. The dead child is traumatized, his face nearly purple from too much crying. Dean sees the boy as he tries to tip over an expensive looking chair. When the chair doesn't move an inch, the kid swipes a tiny hand at the documents on the desk. After, he's so frustrated, he starts kicking the wall.

The kid, the poltergeist – hard separating the two – he reminds Dean of a five year old Sam, the first day of school.

He and Sam have to put him to rest.

Dean clings to the armrest until his knuckles become white, clings to it until Sam glances at his hands and leans back into the couch, his shoulder brushing against Dean's.

At his feet papers are scattered all over the Persian rug and the daughter keeps drawing furiously on them. When she shows Dean her drawings, they are full of black lines around a small purplish point.

"They're very cute," Dean says, though his stomach clenches when she smiles. She isn't bright like children should be. Her colors already tainted with ugly strands of yellow.

-*-

"We did good, right?"

Dean nods.

"I mean, if you hadn't seen it there would have been more victims. Right?"

"Yes, Sam."

"You're kicking a lot of evil sons of bitches." Sam laughs, but it's nearly hysteric it's so loud.

Dean wants to say that he's only pointing them out, that he's like a hound with a portentous nose forced to follow a trail. Or something like that.

"Yeah," he says instead. "Yeah. We did good."

The way Sam relaxes – shoulders and arms and eyes – is worth the lie.

-*-

Ninety-seven miles later, a man crosses the street in front of the Impala. It takes Dean a moment to recognize it. He hits the brakes and the Impala skids on the asphalt. A werewolf in its human form looks like a demon at first sight.

A tulpa in Pinedale, Wyoming, is the concentrated grayness of a human's evil.

Zombies and revenants look like the reverse side of ghosts: meat and muscles without substance.

If Dean had ever been curious about what a shapeshifter looked like under the stolen skin, now he knows.

It's too much and for three days Dean's body rebels, rages and rages with a fever that digs bruises under Sam's eyes.

-*-

So far, Sam's still bright but for a dark orange stripe, almost red, sometimes black. It goes from neck to heart, and Dean sees it through the layers of his clothes.

It's like a scar, wider in the middle; it ends with frayed edges short of Sam's tattoo so that it doesn't break the lines of black ink.

They are a matched pair, he and Sam.

The rest of him is the familiar dun color of his jacket, the hazel of his eyes, floppy hair and miles and miles of Sam. Every day, Dean checks that Sam's colors don't change.

"Tell me what you see," Sam asks and if he's afraid of Dean's answer, either Dean can't see it or Sam's good at hiding.

"Tell me what you see when you look at me," Sam demands again.

"I see only you," Dean says after a moment.

-*-

In Jerome, Idaho, he leaves a bar with a brunette hanging on his arm. She smells like her leather skirt and when she stands on the tips of her toes to kiss him, Dean detects a flowery fragrance under the smoke of the bar. It's so sweet it makes his mouth water.

Her nails are long and pink and her lipstick's half gone already. A grain of salt in the corner of her mouth gives her face a little girl's smile.

Sam cradles a beer in his large hands in the darker and furthest corner of the bar, looks at him with shiny eyes and then smiles like Dean's just done something exceptional.

He mouths the words because Sam's expecting them, " Don't wait up for me."

Sam's smile becomes dazzling and dimpled.

Later, when he's fucking into her, the light hits her just right – tip of her nose and right cheekbone – but it's enough. He sees it, just under the surface, the thin layer of skin. Not the actuality of evil of demons, or the promise of it Dean sees in ghosts. This is differently shaded, beige and brown with blotches of black.

Dean decides it's the color of a human's evil.

She moans and comes while Dean softens inside of her.

She isn't angry, she doesn't mock. She's so damn understanding. But he hurriedly drives her to the address she whispers in his ear, leaves her in the middle of the street.

It's not her fault he can see her sins, and Dean feels like a jerk on the drive back to the bar.

When he's there, he finds Sam's already gone. He checks his watch: he's been away for twenty minutes. Sam's going to be disappointed.

-*-

"Sorry," says Sam. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry."

He breathes it on the back of Dean's neck, so close, too close and Dean freezes, stares at Sam's face in the mirror, so tall behind him, the pain etched raw and stark with the shadows falling over his eyes. Dean's never winning that battle.

Sam's reflection is blurred at the edges, and Dean has the strong impression that Sam's fading already, flickering out in the background of white tiles and bleeding into it.

He turns abruptly, heart beating wildly, the smell of the girl like rotten flowers on his skin not even all the soap he's scrubbed on his body has chased away.

Sam's hair curls in the steam that rises from the still running shower. Dean pulls at a strand, slowly so he doesn't hurt him. He needs proof Sam's still real.

"It's all right," Dean says when he's sure of Sam's consistency. "You have nothing to be sorry about."

After Sam's gone Dean showers again.

-*-

For three weeks it doesn't happen.

The Impala's warm and solid under his body. Dean throws his head back and the curve of the windshield into the rooftop is like a pillow under his neck, the sky a roof of bright stars, all natural color of a beauty that washes over his skin. The beer's cold in his hand and nobody and _nothing_ is around for miles and miles, except Sam, who laughs when Dean's stomach rumbles.

"Let's fill you up," Sam says, and then he's jumping down from the hood of the car, graceful and fast. Dean follows after a moment, reluctant to leave the clarity of the sky, the sharp smell of earth and sand and resin from the trees that fills the air. It's cold desert over here; it's a good kind of cold.

Dean drives north, toward the highway and it's like flying with the windows rolled down and the wind that whips and tugs sharply at the collar of his shirt and Sam's hair. The road is always the same. It never changes: arrow-straight, wide and empty. Dean laughs when music comes blaring from the speakers, the guitar solo John used to tap on the steering wheel.

There's a town on the side of the road of four houses and a gas station, a long building with a bright blue sign.

Dean gets careless and they're in Utah, close to Sandy. The Wasatch Range is capped with snow, white in the twilight. He thinks: three weeks, twenty-one days of uninterrupted quiet. Sharp colors fill his field of vision and he gets careless, sees them only when they're inside the diner.

Sam stiffens to Dean's gasp. They're a matched pair, he and Sam.

It's not pain. Not really, just the disorienting feel of seeing the world split in half. It's bad reception on his TV screen, the baseball game playing over a car race.

Dean keeps his voice low and his expression neutral. "The waitress and the cashier, the guy with the red baseball cap on the table under the third window." He looks around, spots another demon laughing at the blonde girl with the red cowboy shirt.

He points him to Sam with a flicker of his eyes, goes to grab coffee at the counter and bears the malevolent sight the white skin the waitress is masking. She smiles, sweet on the forefront and horrible behind.

Demons he sees. And they taint everything around them. It's a black and gray landscape with slashes of bright red blood.

Sam puts a hand on his shoulder that's half-comforting, warm and solid, says, "Go outside, Dean."

He leaves Sam inside to do his thing and Dean, oh he's a coward, Dean doesn't wait to see. Doesn't want to see this Sam who orders demons back to Hell and blows them away when they won't go.

Outside, the air isn't as sharp and clean as before. Demons: they taint everything around them.

Dean puts a palm against the scar on his chest, then bends in two and vomits beer and bile on the asphalt, by the rear tire of the Impala.

He hopes there won't be many victims.

-*-

Later, Sam helps him inside their room, despite his weariness, despite the high Sam's riding after the kills, Sam helps him inside. On the threshold he stops – the door still open – traps Dean between the wall and his body.

He pats Dean's shoulders and arms and chest like he can find what's missing with touch alone. Maybe he can. It's a new Sam this one. Improved where Dean didn't think there was need for improvement.

He says it wasn't supposed to happen. Says, " It was an accident, Dean. I tried. I tried. But I couldn't find all the pieces. And it was so hot, it was burning and you were burning."

Dean glances up at Sam's eyes; they are wide and wet and Dean wants to tell him, _ Don't cry. _ Instead, he sees a bloodstain on the frayed cuff of his shirt, and smells sour beer in Sam's breath.

Dean grabs Sam's wrists, shakes his hands off before Sam can skim that scar from which his missing parts have spilled over. He's ridiculously afraid of Sam touching it.

"Stop," Dean says. "Stop. You need to rest." His voice is low and the tone the one that's always worked with Sam. It's all memory and little substance but Sam complies when Dean closes the door and drags Sam toward his bed.

"Rest, Sam," he says. "You must be tired."

Sam always apologizes for who Dean is, but he never does for the man Sam has become.

-*-

Demons corrupt space, make everything dark, ugly and dirty. They bring Hell on earth and with it the smell of rotten eggs and the constant screaming – that part Dean's not sure about: it could be memories. Demons are a black cloud hovering above everything, getting denser around the bodies they steal.

Ghosts are easy to deal with. The evil in them is more an intention, a possibility, the chance of _it_ happening. Dean likes taking care of them before they go all the way through the change. It's only a matter of time so he always – always – gives them precedence.

In between, a range of different colors and no one is ever spared. Not men or women, not the young or the old – not even children.

Sam's still just Sam.

Sometimes Dean wishes he could close his eyes and see nothing ever again, but he's glad that whatever it is, it doesn't work when he looks himself in the mirror.

-*-

Sam says it was an accident that some pieces of Dean were left behind. He says it's his fault. He says, "If I'd been faster, better, stronger."

Dean doesn't bother to correct him, pats his shoulder until Sam's guilt becomes bearable again. But he knows it isn't Sam's fault. Those parts that were left behind, they spilled forth from the scar on his chest; maybe they soaked up into the ground of bones, into the brimstone. Maybe they sizzled and evaporated like boiled water.

Some pieces of Dean are still down there, that's why he sees the true face of the demons and the wreck they punish the world with. The rest – it's only a side effect.

"You did good," he tells Sam. "You did what you could. I'm here, aren't I? I'm alive and so are you."

"I should have been better," Sam says stubbornly.

But Sam never had a chance.

Dean wishes Sam could understand: he sees evil so Sam can destroy it.

-*-

They're a matched pair, he and Sam. Similar like ground under a rock, a twin set of animals in cellophane.

\--


End file.
